Fiber optic meaning (what is it, concept and definition)

What is Fiber Optic:

As optical fiber is called the filament or bundle of filaments made of transparent and flexible material, mainly from glass or plastic, which is used for the transmission of information over long distances by light signals.

In this sense, fiber optics is an effective physical means of transmitting data from one place to another, at higher speeds and covering greater distances than other means, such as wireless or copper cables.

As such, the optical fiber is constituted by a transparent core of pure glass with a coating that provides a lower refractive index, which means that the light signals are kept within the core and can travel large distances without scattering. For this reason, today there are already fiber optic cables that cross seas and oceans.

Also, there are different types of optical fiber depending on the use for which it is to be used. In this sense, you can find application in the field of telecommunications and computing for the transmission of data over long distances and with greater bandwidth; in Medicine, as sensors to measure tension, temperature, pressure, etc., as well as for decorative lighting and lasers.

Singlemode and multimode fiber optic

A light beam can describe different types of path inside a fiber, depending on the mode of propagation it uses. In this sense, two types of optical fiber are recognized, depending on the type of propagation they use: singlemode and multimode.

The singlemode fibers are those where a light propagates only way through which manages to convey large amounts of information over long distances. The core diameter of a single-mode fiber is approximately 9 µm, while its cladding diameter reaches 125 µm.

The multimode fiber, meanwhile, is one in which light signals can propagate more than one mode and more than one path, which means that do not arrive all at once and there is the possibility of dispersion. In this sense, multimode fibers are preferably used for short distances of between one and two kilometers at most. In this type of fiber, the diameter of the core ranges between 50 and 62.5 µm, while the diameter of the cladding, as in single-mode fiber, is 125 µm.